To be sick of seeing 'I carry all the load' posts

[ijustdontunderstanditall]

Can't do a poll as on the app

It feels every other post atm is a woman being annoyed because they do everything, and their partner just goes to work, doesn't help with kids/house/life admin etc

Maybe I am just lucky that I don't have this issue, but I just don't understand why people don't just put their foot down and stop doing it all? Surely when the dinner isn't cooked/ hoover put round/ bill paid the other person will man up and help?

Your attitude towards women is quite depressing and it is somewhat understandable why you are working in a male environment.

I've been lucky enough not to be discriminated against because I am a woman but I have talked to other people who have, and I believe them.

well, quite. If you just get on with things, "male environments" are not a menace or something to avoid, it's just that.. a work environment.

Of course discrimination exists, so does racism, and any illegal or abusive attitude.

It's not enough of an excuse in this country not to achieve whatever you want to achieve, it's the exception rather than the norm. You meet a dickhead, a racist, or a misogynist, you deal with it, you don't let one individual hold back your entire career

I've been married 20 years and didn't "audition" as a wife, but rather checked that DH was up to scratch. He'd moved 6 months earlier into a new flat and hadn't got a washing machine yet but was taking his washing home to Mum. He realised this was out of order and sorted it.

And I am saying, just because you haven't seen/experienced the discrimination in your workplace that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Your anecdote doesn't supercede statistics.

Yes, some of the gender pay gap does cover similar roles not the exact same roles but a lot cover the exact same roles where men are still being paid more. Women generally can't work the same hours or show commitment because of the reasons discussed here - they are expected to parent like they don't work and work like they don't parent, whilst SOME men just abdicate their family commitments to women because society perpetuates this. This is the whole purpose of the thread.

Your internal misogyny is on full display on your last paragraph and it makes you look a bit silly.

It tells you all you need to know when a woman can only be accused of "misogyny" because you don't agree with her.😂

You kind of prove my point, relying on the same excuses to justify a lack of ambition and the need to be a constant victim.

Interesting, if slightly goady, thread.

I'm in one of those equal relationships. I have a very low tolerance for doing more than my fair share of housework. DC have been brought up to do their own laundry, make their own packed lunches etc since they started secondary school. Everyone cleans the toilet after they've used it. Other cleaning/cooking is done by rota.

I'm the same person who, in a different relationship, found myself doing way more than my fair share having had DC despite never noticing it before. When I tackled him on it, he became psychologically abusive. I left shortly afterwards when the increasing rows turned physical.

I've done a lot of thinking about this and laud the post above which explains that not pulling your weight domestically can be a form of domestic abuse.

I think it's really important to understand that none of this happens in a vacuum.

Humans are a social species and we're status driven. Our home and belongings are not just seen as our safe places but also as representative of ourselves . Across many cultures it's desirable to have a warm, welcoming home and to be hospitable. Men want this too! We all want to live somewhere safe and pleasant and to feel pride when someone comes to see us in it. It's natural, therefore, to make an effort to keep our homes pleasant. No one should feel dismissed for taking pride in making a nice home. Barring OCD-levels of cleaning, this is a natural behaviour IMO. The problem is not what some (mainly women) are doing. It's what some (mainly men) are not doing.

We also have a persistent gender pay gap that, funnily enough, is largely explained by the fact that women have children, since it largely doesn't exists until that point. The biggest way to reduce the gender pay gap would be that women stop having DC, but no one suggests that.

We also happen to live in a society where home making and child care doesn't count towards GDP. It has no 'real' economic value (unless you have to buy it, of course).

Our social set up actually encourage this division of labour since someone has to have the children and raise them but the state doesn't want to subsidise that, placing the responsibility on individual families. Since few families will earn enough to comfortably pay for a full time nanny, one parent nearly always ends up scaling back or giving up work completely and it's usually the mother because of things like breastfeeding and social expectations.

So, even for many women who have maintained independence until having children, it's not uncommon to find themselves on a lesser salary (or devoid of one completely) having children. In a society that says there is only a moral value to being a good mum, not a financial one. Many respond by trying to "pull their weight" in other ways, even if their DH doesn't actually expect that of them. And our patriarchal society encourages this.

We have a gender earnings gap, not pay gap.

Of course people who choose to exit the workforce to focus on other lifestyle choices are going to earn less than those who keep noses to the grindstone. As they should. Can't have it all.

There are tradeoffs to having children. Expecting otherwise is rather naive. Presumably the upside of having one's offspring compensates for any losses or downsides.

People doing the same job should be paid the same. It's not about years of service.
I agree the obviously better jobs might go to more experienced people and that is a whole other issue, but there are still businesses where men are paid more because they are men and not because they didn't take time off to raise their family.

Allen shouldn't be disadvantaged for having a family but on can't really expect to be given a promotion or pay rise when you're not there or doing reduced hours.

that would be unfair on women just as much as men.

Child-free workers, or people who organise childcare in such a way the children don't impact on their work schedule should not be penalised or discriminated against parents.

And I said that as a mum!

Society fundamentally relies on people having children to fill skills gaps, fund pensions, etc. This benefits everyone, not just mothers. But mothers pay a disproportionate price for that. Granted, most mothers aren't having children for society but for themselves, but so do fathers yet it doesn't have the same impact on them.

Women end up mostly being the ones who step back from working because they're the only ones who can gestate and lactate. Many, like me, would have loved to have had DC without that but (like men do) but biology got in the way. Once that stage has happened, the precedent is set for all the reasons I gave in my earlier post.

I was a single parent so both breadwinner and primary carer. Fortunately, also a professional so able to buy in child care (although it left me skint). For those not earning that kind of money, the costs are prohibitive. And so the inequality starts.

If women refused to have children, society would collapse. Yet we don't protect women who have children. That's not fair.

@Resilience. I agree with you.

It's interesting that women are refusing to have children (or not having "enough") and a lot of people are very worried about this. So while having children and caring for them is seen as an individual matter (with the burden disproportionately falling on women), not having them is seen as a societal issue.

This is why I will no longer live with men.

Yes.